Dear Google: Big Brands Aren't&nbspEnough

Google's recent brand update has gotten a lot of buzz this past week. Previously, the best a single domain could hope for was one listing in the SERPs with possibly 1-2 indented listings. Now, a large brand can completely dominate the top 10 with a single website. Let's look at the case many people have been citing – a search for "apple". Here's a summary of what that results page looks like today:

Apple.com dominates the 1st page, holding slots 1-7, with a few other big brands finishing up the top 10. Google's argument seems to be that this is good for consumers, but is a SERP monopolized by a single website really what search users are looking for?

Unraveling Search Intent

One of the ways you can tell what a searcher is interested in is by looking at the way they refine that search. It's nearly impossible to sort out the intent behind a search for "apple" by itself, but if you look at follow-up searches, they start to paint a clearer picture.

Thanks to a Twitter shout-out from Dave Naylor, the folks at Hitwise (thanks, Matt) were kind enough to pull some data from their Search Term Sequence tool for me. The data below is a 4-week snapshot (prior to the brand update) of what people searched for after they searched for "apple":

"itunes"

"facebook"

"youtube"

"apple"

"best buy"

"apple store"

"google"

"craigslist"

"itunes download"

Of course, some of these queries are the typical exit queries ("youtube"), and some are people who probably didn't get what they wanted the first time and typed "apple" again later (if at first you don't succeed…). Apple.com is clearly represented in some of this search intent, but there's also an implied attempt ("best buy", "craigslist") to buy Apple products at stores outside of Apple.com. In the current top 10, not a single non-Apple retailer is currently featured, a fact that pretty clearly has an impact on consumer choice.

Bing Search Funnel

Unfortunately, Google doesn't have a tool for isolating its query funnels, but Bing does over at adCenter Labs (thanks to Branko Rihtman for the tip). With the Search Funnel tool, you can isolate keywords that start or end with a specific word:

Although Bing searchers, especially the former MSN portal crowd, are known to differ from Google visitors a bit, the chain of intent for the average consumer undoubtedly has many similarities. Here are the top 10 post-"apple" queries on Bing:

"bestbuy"

"ebay"

"ipod"

"dell"

"appleipod"

"circuitcity"

"apple vacations"

"apple.com"

"sony"

"target"

Here, the trend is even more striking – a full 6 of the top 10 follow-up queries are either electronics retailers ("bestbuy") or Apple competitors ("sony"). Apple Vacations also has a top spot, clearly showing that not everyone searching for "apple" is interested in Apple computers.

The #15 spot – "apples". Yes, some people just want to find an actual apple. This reminds me of the time I searched for Brown's Chicken and the first result was Wikipedia. I didn't want the history of the company, I WANTED SOME ^$%#@ FRIED CHICKEN! Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

What Do We Want?

Clearly, search intent is a tricky thing, and "apple" is a tough search to interpret, but there's a real danger when companies start to tell us what we want based on their own self-interest, and my fear is that the brand update does just that. Given clear data on how much click-through the top 3 results grab, it's obvious that a brand that dominates the top 7 is effectively crowding out not only the competition, but retailers, product reviews, product complaints, etc. This has profound implications for consumer choice and ORM, and it will be interesting to see if this trend continues and spreads into broader queries.

Is it me, or has this site been acting up for anyone else lately? It scrolls by itself, I can't find comments I just wrote, it tells me the post isn't found until I try a few times then lets me in. Huh. Very weird.

Unbelievable. I just checked it. Honestly, I love Apple products, but word apple means fruit in first place. If I would look for Apple products I would type apple iPad or apple laptop. But I'm a human and not computer. ... This is why for example DMOZ listing is valuable because is being edited by real people.

Although I seriously doubt most people are shopping for apples online, I actually think a much higher percentage are searching for fruit-related terms. You have ton include all of the information seekers and researchers. For example, people looking to learn about pesticide content in apples, or when apples are in season, or nutritional value for an apple, etc.

I agree. The percentage of people who would look for apple as a fruit is much higher. A lot of people don't even know that there are apple computers, even though that Apple computers are the best (for me). Lets just see: what the Apple computer has as a logo? its has an Apple (fruit) and not opposite (Apple fruit has computer logo on it). If we try to look for Banana or Peach we see results from Wikipedia or something else related to fruit and even images.

Apple fruit has much longer history than Apple computer.

Yes apple can be decorative item and it would be good to have on the first page other (non apple computer related results) too.

If there were more people searching for Apple (the fruit) then we might see that in the follow on queries.

Instead we are seeing that the largest majority of people are actually refining their query with another Apple brand related query. This would suggest to me that the majority of people are actually searching for information regarding the brand, and without any additional information for the query "Apple" that is exactly what Google is delivering.

Here's a good example. search for macintosh apple and results still dominated by Apple. Two listings are about the fruit. I'd say a majority of the people putting that search in are looking for the fruit (a least in that order).

The main issue here that your post fails to address is the huge change that this makes (on a positive nature) for those of us that carry out brand reputation management.

From my testing, almost any brandname search/domain name search returns 7 listings from that brand/domain. The final three places are generally wikipedia, youtube, major newspapers etc.

In the past we have had to push up favourable articles using links and so on, however now we dont.

All in all, major win for SEO's with this update - as long as you were not competitively focussing on "anti-brand-management campaigns". And that was never a good idea anyway.

-----------------Another change that nobody has picked up on either, is the "reviews" type searches. previously when you typed in "[brandname] reviews" you generally got a page or two from the original brand. now in most cases that I look at, you are getting genuine review sites.

Fair enough - I was arguing more from the consumer perspective, but if you work in ORM for a medium to large brand, your job probably did just get a lot easier. Unfortunately, if you're an affiliate, your job just got a lot harder. I have one SEO client this move will probably hurt considerably (or at least require a major tactical shift).

Interesting note on the review queries. I'll be curious to see if that's a fluke or a major shift - that would at least indicate a broader strategy here on Google's part.

Great discovery Pete. I just typed Apple in and got zero local, but apple.com dominated the first 8 spots for me. 8 out of 10. That's crazy!

[puts on tinfoil anti-conspiracy hat] I know this is probably so far from the truth that you'd need to take 3 buses and a cab to get there, but given the fact that Google is now playing ball (translation- giving them money) with a big phone brand (verizon), is it at all possible that somehow they are changing the game to be able to reap some kind of payback from the big brands for giving them favor in the SERP's? [takes off tinfoil anti-conspiracy hat]

Nahhhh. That's just crazy talk. I know that they only have our very best interests at heart (I'd better stop this diatribe. I'm starting to sound like greywolf ;).

From tin-foil hat perspective, the one argument I've heard that makes sense is that Google is pushing the big brands to make the resellers have to spend more on PPC. I'm not sure I believe that, but there's some logic to it.

You would think that Google WOULD want the "little guy" to come up in the SERPs because if they're making money by being found, they'll have more money to spend on PPC campaigns. Competition is good for business, no?

(The only other thing I remember from high school Econ class was "There's no such thing as a free lunch.")

Interesting. I honestly don't know Bing well enough to know who copied whom. The number of changes Google has made in the past few months makes me think they are seriously worried about the Bing/Yahoo merger.

imo Google is the one copying Bing features for the last couple of months. Look how they copied the bing interface and the image search. Bing results may not be as relevant as Google but it is getting ahead in usability. The recent bing-yahoo merger is a great threat to Google.

I honestly believe this change was made entirely to drive more PPC spend as retailers are now being crowded out of the first page for big brands like Apple & Microsoft, and are forced to either buy their visibility or lose a whole lot of traffic and sales.

Even if a retailer ranks #9 behind all of those Apple results, they're still below the fold and wise to spend a boat load on PPC to appear at the top of the page. But a lot of retailers were pushed to page 2, whereas before they had solid first page visibility.

Call me a cynic, but this "enhancement" has nothing to do with user intent, or providing a better search experience. It is an attempt to generate more revenue, and is unquestionably a poor user experience no matter how you cut it.

I think the way businesses and people make decisions is a very circuitous process. The PPC benefit most likely sealed the deal but probably wasn't the first motivator.

Let's play this scenario out and equate PPC to the "ice cream shop".

Mike: Honey, I want to go out for dinner tonight.
Maureen: OK. What do you have in mind?
Mike: Well I have this sudden urge for fried chicken.
Maureen: Great! Where?
Mike: If we go to Boozie's House of Blues and take Gianluca Blvd. back we will pass right by the ... ice cream shop for desert.
Maureen: I thought you liked the other place a bit better?
Mike: I'm really in the mood for ice cream and Boozie's fried chicken is still damn good.

Search engines end up altering our behavior at the same time that they "try" to study us and serve us. It's an interesting cycle where we have been trained to expect certain results based off our historical actions, yet the search engines simultaneously study us and make adjustments.

The brand change is upon us. Now we see that our search terms that happen to be synonymous with brands will favor those brands over everything else. I propose that this cause and effect scenario is based purely off our search behavior and not malicious profiteering. OK; to be fair let's say that it's somewhere in the middle.

The new brand update is a problem but for different reasons than many of us think. Most of the problems are due to how we've been trained. We perpetually use the one box without worrying about the other filters on the page. Up to now we haven't needed to worry about anything else except for the one box.

Let's remind ourselves that there are multiple on-page tools to help us refine our query in real time. If we use them then immediately we can select more targeted queries without being subjected to the "The One Brand to Rule them All and in Google, Bind Them."

There's search suggest in the main search bar. We have "Something different" on the left under our refinement options. At the page bottom we see "Searches related to". Keep in mind that I am NOT absolving Google from certain responsibilities. Even though the tools are available and they work well in my opinion, there is yet a different problem with the brand update.

Here's my version of the brand update problem.

Except for the search suggest, the other filtering tools that will give us the search variety that we have been trained to expect ... these other filters are not in plain view.

Google has made a fundamental change to the SERPs based on brand but we have been trained to expect variety. Yet the tools that give us the variety we need are not placed where they need to be. I question if these filtering options will ever be made more prominent but I highly doubt that. Here's where the responsibility falls directly on Google's shoulders.

They made a strategic change and probably will not sacrifice sponsored ad placements in order to place the query filtering tools where they will be used.

As a whole I think the search page is great. I love the tools on the page. Many others will not and due to habit will be subjected to brand infused results that force them to think that Google has turned into a marketing machine.

I can agree with you to an extent. It really depends on how you search and old habits are hard to break but the general consumer population may not be familiar with the tools that are available to refine a search.

This is exactly my problem. I am as annoyed as everyone else, but not at the brand update directly. I am frustrated that we have been given a potentially better tool but the controls are out of reach.

Whether I am right or wrong it almost doesn't matter. The average searcher will take these results and assume that such-and-such brand must be the most amazing thing in the universe. Just look how Google is rewarding them!

In its entirety I think the Google search page is more powerful than it has ever been. Unfortunately we've been trained to not need most of it.

reading you very good comment, it was natural for me thinking of television, where I spent almost 11 years of my life....

Just think it...

Google, as any broadcast company, says it wants to present the best results (tv programs) to the mass, therefore shows them what the Mass (meant as majority of people) searches related to one keyword... and in a Branded world (in this sense the No Logo movement poorly failed) this is a branded keywords... the "Apple" example is only a very limit case.

The same on Tv... the Mass loves @#%&^ tv shows (Nielsen is there to prove it), therefore broadcast companies produces that kind of tv shows and aren't all PBS. It is that also for thematic channels like Discovery. Then are TV Channels that specializes and focus on those people who love to refine his tv experience (HBO, Showtime), that is the same as saying that we could refine searches on Google/Bing with the Tools the Search Engines gives us... if we want. -

I think this could also be seen as another way Google is try to move information up the chain. Much like showing movie listings or the weather (instead of linking you to those pages), by allowing multiple pages from one domain (like the iTunes) page, Google brings potentially relevant information one step higher. Of course, at the same time, this bypasses the site in question to some degree, and it changes the nature of the SERP. Now, instead of 1-10 representing multiple properties and a wide array of choices, Google is narrowing the field for us. If it's what we want, that's good - if it's not, then we don't really have a way to undo it (as you implied).

The other question is really one of motivation. I don't really take a conspiratorial view - to me, it's more a question of whether this is, on balance, good for search users (and I'm not convinced). Still, it's hard to separate big brands and big money, and all of the influence that implies.

I dont know if you guys have checked out the second result page found the this links

www.info.apple.com

livepage.apple.com

Which are again from apple, I think google has gone brand consensus & favoring big brands for their single keyword. As you search something like "buy apple iphone" at that time you can see the brands are not being favored.

Did the check with "Apple" on Google.es and it is still quite normal (Just 3 plus sitelinks on the first of 10). The same in Google.it (2 plus 1 sitelink... that refers to the finnish site of Apple!).

That means that the Brand Algo Tweak is not spread all over actually.

On a user perspective, I find this quite annoying... as if I search for "Apple", I would like to receive a not monochromatic kind of Serp. I mean, if it was done to help the users, I would eventually bettered the "Related Search" notes.

On a marketer perspective, I like it in order to defend my Brand Reputation and dominate the Serp.

As you can see... Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hide.

AH! I think that SyFi is now biting its hands... Imagine if it was still calling SciFi

If I use a major brand as FIAT, I see an "Apple" effect. 7 results are from FIAT sites (not just Fiat.it), as they used to put FIAT in almost any domain names (for instance: fiat500.it). The other results are not from competition but more of news/knowledge content sites (aka: Wikipedia but also Press Associations).

If I do the same with brands which names are ambiguous, things change radically.

Parmigiano Reggiano (we use it to mean also the cheese itself and not the brand) > just 3 results directly related to the Brand;

San Pellegrino (that is both the mineral water and the city where it is bottled) > again only 3 results

Montenegro (that is obviously the Country of Montenegro but also the brand of an italian liquor) > just 1 and not in the first positions.

This isn't the only major change to the SERPs for brand terms lately - the "related ads" test that started affecting the paid results in mid-June is another step toward Google monetizing these ultra-valuable brand search results.

For those of you who aren't familiar, AdWords now shows ads for "related queries" on results pages that would otherwise have only a few advertisers showing. A lot of brand search results pages (where there were once only an occasional competitor or two showing in the paid ads) are now filled with "related" advertisers.

Seems to me like Google just shifted the variety in the SERPs from the organic listings to the paid listings.

Try a search for "caribou coffee" - that's a good example of related ads meets brand update. It seems like they may have scaled back the related ads a bit in the past couple of weeks. Through July I was seeing it everywhere, now it seems a bit less prevalent - but it's still alive and well in some places.

Seriously, Google, I expect some variety when I search. I'm also fine with refining my search query when I obviously searched too broadly in the first place. This isn't a cool move. Great for Apple, I suppose though.

Definitely a good post to make us all think, Dr. Pete. I wonder though how bad of a move this actually is (devil's advocate alert!).

In my limited experience a search that only contains a brand is often a proxy for a direct visit. If someone wants to visit Apple's website, it makes sense that Google is trying to show the most popular pages on the domain to searchers.

It is this population of visitors that will be better served by the brand change. The question is: how many folks are like this vs. searchers with a different intent but whom only use the brand in the search?

There is a lot of speculation here but I'm not sure we have any empirical evidence.

I won't call it "scientific", but I think the search refinements are a bit of evidence that many people don't view brand searches as direct visits. I'm certainly not claiming most people are shopping for apples, but many people want to get the best price on an Apple product, see product reviews, read about the iPhone 4 antenna issues, etc. I think it's fine to give the brand top billing on even an ambiguous query like "apple", but to give the same site 7+ top billings? I don't know - I'm just not convinced that's good for consumers.

I have to agree with Mike - the influence of exact-match domains has been strong for a while (a bit too strong, IMO). How this will cross with the brand updates, though, is a good question, and a complex one. I think a lot depends on authority - whereas an exact-match domain might rank JUST for matching, it's not going to get 5 spots in the SERPs without the link profile to back it up. That's just my guess at this point, though.

Exact match domains do coast on that a little too much in my opinion too. I can see Google looking for a certain number of authority links in a brand's profile before giving them this treatment - links from CNN, Time Magazine, and so forth. I assume your links would have to be pretty strong...

Like anything, keyword-wise, I'm sure there will also be a competitive aspect. Getting 7+ spots for "apple" is a whole lot tougher than dominating the SERPs for "O'Clannaghan and Sons Consolidated Plumbing".

What this shows is that the brand update has effectively made the vague searches all about the main brands. And of course they would, if you search for "Apple" then yes I would expect to find that on the first page as they are a huge brand with massive exposure (maybe more than apples themselves) but because we are using that word it is more obvious. I see the point that it could end up being a take-over of big brand names over what users are actually searching for, I think if you become more specific you can still find what you are looking for. Unfortunately, some would argue that is not what search engines are about, typing in exactly and precisely what you want and generally it shouldn`t be. Typically the advantages of search engines is that you can search for anything in broader terms and get a hit. As time goes on I agree that we could see the top page dominated by big brands and companies and this would apply of course only to relevant words or phrases. With this in mind it would not be big enough to affect the nature of search engines but it is a concern how things are changing.

Unfortunately, I don't have that historical data - "apple" was the first query a few people in the industry noted. It's possible this was in play longer for certain brands (or in testing), but then rolled out much wider in the past couple of weeks. I know some clients and competitors have just had this change kick in.

Typically, in the past, back-links and domain authority didn't affect multiple listings. The most one subdomain could have was indented listings, and even multiple results across a root domain were rare (you might have gotten one additional subdomain ranked for a powerful brand).

Agreed on the longer-tail queries, but there are still plenty of people who don't think that way, or refine. What was interesting to me was the refinement pattern - IMO, it shows that the SERPs don't reflect user intent.

Interesting Pete. Just checked the keyword, "apple" in Google and I was totally astonished.

Google is giving so much of importance to the brand names? They are treating the brand names in searches as "site:" searches?

I think most of them will not use the keyword "apple" alone to find apple products. They may probably use, "apple store" or "apple iphone 4G" instead. But this keyword is completely dominated by the apple.com domain and there is no sign for the apple to be descibed as a fruit. :(

This may be a boost to certain brands, but this simply seems to be some polluted result in the SERP's.

We just noticed this ourselves yesterday when searching for a client - suddenly they completely dominated their own front page! We then discovered that it was as widespread as you say. In most cases, yes, searching for a brand does mean that you want that brand to come up, but not always. I'm not sure this is the right choice; it will certainly get them more money on PPC though, as brands which formerly appeared for other companies will now have to resort to other ways to present competition.

A thought I had about this after I had published the post is that; do you think that this could be a very sneeky way for Google to get smaller non-brand businesses that are selling branded products and can no londer rank on the 1st page, to buy into PPC to gain 1st place visibility?

Of course. Unlike the government, where the law of unintended consequences is the one that always gets passed, Google has undoubtedly considered the effects of this update re: PPC. I think your guess is likely correct.

Also, the "apple" search is most instructive in that is shows just who G thinks their real customer is. Hint: It is not you...

As I noted in another comment, my less conspiratorial gut feeling is that this is a move against affiliate marketers. I have heard the PPC argument from a couple of people, though, and there is a certain logic to it.

After reading all the comments, I was waiting for someone to suggest what I was thinking:

This be a strategic move to get people to visit Page 2, 3, etc of a SERP.

From Google's perspective, it has to be annoying that hardly anyone looks at subsequent pages in a SERP. But if more visitors trafficked those pages, then the PPC conspiracy seems a bit more realistic.

Nice post! You bring an interesting idea to light. There are quite a few companies like apple who could become monsters of SERP. I do wonder if maybe the amount of SEO behind these brands along with being the actual brand is actually part of what will boost the likely hood that they will dominate the SERPs. A search for Sony & HP have returned similar search results. Though I do think that consumers will think that clearly they are being spoon-fed by the Brand & Google then decide to move on to the next page for non-Branded sites of interest. Never the less this is definitely something to think about.

Wow Dr.Pete (nice name btw) you struck a chord with this one. This is defnitely getting a lot of attention in the SEO world right now and I am definitely eager to see how things play out in the not too distant future. While I can see how this can be beneficial for the brand itself as mentioned by someone else above who deals with big brands and seo campaigns, I can also see how this isn't really giving the consumer/searcher a better search experience.

My job definitely got easier with a good chunk of the work I do, however there is a smaller percentage that I am gonna have to work much harder to accomplish the desired results. Even if it makes my life easier for the most part I still see this as an issue for googles end users.

It is a gift for marketers to promote their product / service for what ever time. I would be more than happy to use my 'Push marketing' strategy to get first few positions that are up for grabs. Regards

I think this is the start of a very steep slippery slope for Google. They are putting money before user experience and it might take a while before the general public start to notice but it will affect them and they will not be happy.

I don’t have a problem with Google listing a number of top results for apple.com and users can identify their website. However so much other information that could be of interest to the user has been wiped off page 1.

If Google is now starting to give big brands priority in the searches does anyone have any research on how far this power extends?

If you took the fashion industry for example, if Armani was given the same domination as apple for the phrase “Armani jeans” could this power extend to other searches like jeans, black jeans etc. Would these searches start to be dominated by all the big brands? Will the websites with smaller brands but better seo be wiped off page one?

Thanks for the post Pete, its definitely shows how big brands have moved up the chain in eyes of google. But I as many of us have noticed branding being a major factor for while in ranking. When I say branding, it includes everything press releases, social media, ugc, good product description, website design, layout and linking.

I feel a little amazed at the results but somwhere in the back of mind I definitely saw this coming..

I think Google has made a bad decision here, maybe something that Bing will be looking at and laughing. If I am looking for apple ( as in the makers of ipods, iphones etc) I would expect it too be top of google under apple and woiuld be happy with one listing.. I have found the website containing the information I need. i don't need a whole page dedicated to apple website, would be nice to see smaller brands that sell apples maybe, or the origin of the fruit apple! The fruit was around way before the corporation after all. :)

I hope Google see the errors of their ways and rectify this in some way. Users want multiply choices from different places, not a sitemap of one website!

I would say this feature should be vailable for all the companies not for apple.com, those because some time we cant find the orginal website which we are looking for at the top spot, I think Google should improvise that feature.

It doesn't make sense to see a brand dominate serps like this. Small businesses and startups are going to have an even harder time competing now for particular keywords. Google will need to tweak this very often to find the right balance.

I performed the Google/Apple Test (from Indiana) and the entire first page were all Apple results. Boooo!!!! From a user perspective, I want variety mostly because if I were looking for a specific apple product, I'd want to find the cheapest one available. (But then again, if I were looking for a specific Apple product I probably wouldn't have searched only for "Apple," but rather the long-tail "Apple iPod" or "Apple "iPhone."

One thing I did notice though, was that there were no indented listings on that page. I would think if they were that important as a result, there wold be at least one indentation. (Unless I'm misunderstanding the concept of indentation in the SERPs.)

This seems to be changing the indentation rules. Previously, if 2-3 results from the same subdomain fell into the Top 10, the additional results would be added as indentations to the 1st result for that subdomain. Single subdomains weren't typically allowed completely separate listings.

It's funny, when I search Bing for apple I get a mahalo result on my first page when Bing segments the search into "Apple Fruit" and "Apple Store." Aaron Wall will be delighted...

But yeah the brand thing is definitely overkill. Especially since when I search for "apple" Apple.com is the authority site and has its little authority site links beneath the #1 result to the exact same urls that make up the next 5 organic results. That is just silly. Why not stick to the brand name = authority site model? I can see putting on a tinfoil hat over this, was the authority site model inadequate? I don't think so...

"I didn't want the history of the company, I WANTED SOME ^$%#@ FRIED CHICKEN!"

Ha!

I've had the opposite thing happen, where I specifically wanted the Wikipedia page for a given company but searched for it on Google, and got the dumb brand pages instead. I've even committed the famous faux pas of Googling "Google" for this reason.

For big name brands to dominate search results like this can become a real pain for anyone trying to optimize a client's website. Also if you search for "apples" versus "apple" the results are substantially different although www.apple.com still comes out in first. Then again I don't want to make this about apples when it's really about pushing not only competition out of the way, but bloggers, reviewers, and other opinion based sites to the bottom. Personally, I think it's wrong. It does have a direct influence on consumers because not everyone understands SEO so when Joe schmoe sees these search results he might think to himself "Well these guys must be good and I'm going to choose them because it's what I see the most of."

From a reputation management point of view it's fantastic, but how do you trigger google to see your website as a brand? I see seomoz has 6 results, is it just down to how may links you have with the correct website name rather than keywords?

Much like indented links, there's clearly a big authority aspect in play. It's not just about anchor text and keyword placement - you have to have the link profile to back it up. Of course, the numbers probably vary a lot with the industry and competition, so there's no one threshold, I'm sure.